Tjaco's vibe practice blog

Welcome to my practice blog! My name is Tjaco Oostdijk and I'm a vibes player from Holland. I'm studying currently with Tony Miceli online and we decided it would be a good experiment to keep track of what I'm practicing in detail and put it in this blog. I would love for other vibe players, other musicians or teachers to comment on what I'm doing and if you have suggestions, feel free to comment!

Saturday, October 13, 2007

You know what I hear also? I hear your feel getting better and better as you play through each key. Keep that in mind when you’re playing. It’s really hard to swing at the tempo you’re playing.

I think you’re ready to move on to a different solo! I think it should be another instrument. Clifford Brown maybe? You’d be suprised how comfortable Trumpet solos are on the vibes. Maybe they are on all instruments, however I always feel great when I play trumpet solos on the vibes.

As a follow up, you should now work on playing solo choruses through all the keys of you sort of being influenced by him. Know what I mean?

Work on that, record yourself going through a bunch of keys and send that to me

Saturday, September 29, 2007

Friday, September 21, 2007

Finally another update...! I'm terribly busy so I'm trying to keep up with things and still keeping some practicing going. I've cut down the stuff I'm doing and focusing on a few things. I do a couple of technique things every day and the rest of the time I'm mostly working on Don't Get Around in 12 keys.I recorded some things yesterday. I played the 2 milt solos in F and also did some soloing in the same key.I'm now working on playing the 2 solos in 12 keys without stopping. So I'm modulating in 2 ways(cycle and chromatic). I'll upload a recording of this when I'm able to play it through. I'll also record soloing in 12 keys in the same way.The other thing I'm gonna post soon is a solo version of Bluesette and Tony is going to post the same tune at the same time. That will be fun!

note about technique:I'm now playing about 1 hour of 'single' line technique each day. I'm not thinking about making music, but I feel that I really have to connect with the instrument fysically. It still feels that I sometimes can't be free to play stuff that I hear because of lack of technique. I'm really trying to structure this hour to build my technique gradually. I practice with metronome and when something feels comfortable I increase the tempo by 1 bpm. So this is hardly a difference, but I think this is the way to gradually increase my technique and speed.I guess I'm gonna try to get some 4-mallet technique stuff going. I'm gonna think about how to structure that...

What else?

Preparing for gigs 25/26th of august

I have two nice gigs this weekend on a big festival in Amsterdam. One is with a brazilian/pop band. I actually play drums on this gig, but I wanted to learn the tunes by heart so I had to put some time into that this weekThe other gig is on vibes with a funk/jazz group and they play all kinds of odd-meter stuff. 11/8, 7/8, 5/4 etc... Also not the standard 2-5-1 changes, so this is a challenge! I also learned that stuff by heart so this took a lot of practice time this week. I'll try to record the gig and post some audio on here.

Because of these gigs I didn't have a lot of time to practice other stuff, so that's a little disorganised at the moment... What I have been doing is:

Green Dolphin Etude: I played it a couple times through at tempo 65 bpm

Don't Get Around(only in original key):

Played it monophonically

comping melodically

soloing

recorded the two milt solo's (see links below)

Practiced soloing on Blue Bossa(I also started transcribing the milt solo on the album Big 3!)

There is one thing that I think I should do more, but I still don't... PLAYING SONGS IN 12 KEYS!! This is still hard. It's easy for me to play only melody or only chords in 12 keys, but when I put that together I get lost and have to think hard and take it slow. This takes a lot of concentration and so takes a lot of energy... But I'll just go and DO IT!!

Next week I have a trio gig on wednesday, so that's gonna be nice. So after the weekend I will be working on that repertoire only! So from thursday I'll pick up the old practice stuff.

Friday, August 24, 2007

Monday, August 20, 2007

I posted an mp3 on comping for you. Just turned on the recorder and played and talked a little. Should give you some ideas. There’s some BS in there. It’s hard to just comp and attempt to be creative on the fly. I think though I make my point.